Presentation Assistant Pro: The Indezine Review

Introduction

Presentation Assistant Pro is the professional edition of Presentation Assistant -- both are on-screen presentation tools that work like an assistant when you are delivering a presentation, or doing a training session. In this review, we are looking at the Pro version of Presentation Assistant.

Presentation Assistant Pro provides various tools that equip you to make your audience attentive -- some of these tools such as zoom can enlarge portions of the screen. Other tools such as spotlight, curtain, screen digital clock, arrow point, magnification, screen capture etc. offer significant assistance in explaining processes or steps to an audience.

Presentation Assistant Pro is from GoldGingko Inc, a Guangzhou, China based company. You can learn more about Presentation Assistant Pro, and download a demo version from their site.

Using Presentation Assistant Pro

Download the installer from the link given above, run the setup routine, and follow the instructions -- although you can
also read this review without replicating any steps on your computer. We have used Presentation Assistant Pro to add more tools to our PowerPoint presentation -- but you can use this product with any other program:

Launch PowerPoint, and open any presentation (or, any other program as you require). Now, go to your Windows Start menu and choose All Programs | Presentation Assistant Pro | Presentation Assistant Pro.

Main Control Pane: Here you'll find options to set the timer, screen zoom, annotation tool, pointer effect, electronic whiteboard, etc. You can also customize task shortcuts, play music, and switch monitors.

Desktop Drawing Toolbar: Many drawing and writing tools can be found here -- some additional tools such as spotlight, mouse tracking magnification, full-screen zoom, on-screen keyboard, clock, screen capture, etc. can also be accessed from the Desktop Drawing Toolbar.

Since Presentation Assistant Pro is a very vast application with lots of tools and options, we'll limit this review to explore Pointer Effect options as they make it easy for your audience to follow your actions while doing a demo, or even presenting a PowerPoint presentation. Within the Main Control Pane, choose the Pointer Effect option (highlighted in red in Figure 2).

Figure 2: Pointer Effect option selected within the Main Control Pane

Now, click the Activate Mouse Clicks (F9) button (highlighted in blue in Figure 2 above) to enable the mouse clicks. Just click anywhere on your screen -- you'll see some animated outlined circles emanating from the point where you clicked (see Figure 3). This gives your audience a visual indication of where you clicked. By default, left-clicking gets you red outlined circles and right-clicking results in similar, green circles -- you can customize the color, size, and duration of these animated circles, as required.